


heavy weighs the crown

by lonelyghosts



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Death, Corpses, Denial, Doomed Timelines, F/F, Heavy Angst, an (unsuccessful) attempt at mind control, lots of hurt and no comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 23:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16774939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyghosts/pseuds/lonelyghosts
Summary: Your name is Vriska Serket and you won. You're the winner. It's you.





	heavy weighs the crown

Your name is Vriska Serket and you won. You're the winner. It's you.

Jack's lifeless form lies motionless on the ground at your feet, and you are breathing heavily from exertion. You are bleeding- from a deep wound on your ribs that sliced right down to the bone, and a weeping cut on the forehead from where he'd slashed you across the face, and a thousand other little nicks on your body, but you don't care. You have more pressing concerns.

The scimitar drops from your hand as you get to your feet, movements slow at first as you catch your bearings, but faster when the haze of battle-victory stops blurring your vision. It clatters, hollow, to the ground, as you run, your booted feet squelching in the puddles of red and blue that was shed in your fight. 

Halfway to her your legs fail you and you collapse to your knees, but there isn't time to waste with getting back up. Instead you crawl, hands-and-feet, to her body, dragging yourself along, leaving a trail of dark blue in your wake as your scraped and bleeding legs rub against the rock and dirt, until at last you're there, holding Terezi in your arms. 

She looks so peaceful like this. Every line of worry and anger and confusion and joy that she's earned over her six sweeps- most of them, you think wryly, because of you- is smoothed over. Gone. 

You hate it.

When you kiss her, you are as gentle as you have ever been. More so. Her mouth is so soft ( _and so cold_ ), and your lips are chapped and aching, just as cracked and bleeding like the rest of you. It is the first kiss that you've meant and wanted and ached to give, in all of your sweeps, and she doesn't wake.

She doesn't wake.

She's supposed to wake up. It didn't work. It's supposed to work, this is a Game, and games have rules. Rules are one of the things that you can rely upon, always, to be there even when everything else doesn't make sense, even when everything has left you behind and broken you. She is supposed to be awake.

Maybe she's not dead. That would be just like Terezi, wouldn't it! Doing things just to rile you up. Playing petty tricks and games to see what you'd think of them- the same way she used to during your wriggler days, talking about justice and fairness and _cheating._

Back then you hadn't understood. A loser is a loser is a loser, and losers are food for Spidermom. It doesn't matter why they lost- whether they'd played fair, or cheated, or had just been in your way. It's why you are the winner, even now.

You understand now what she was talking about back then, of course. 'Justice'. 'Heroism'. The words have meaning because she taught you what they meant, and she can't be gone, she just can't - 

"C'mon, Pyrope!" When you laugh, the sound comes out cracked and rusty. It is not convincing, not even to you. "He's dead now. I killed him. You can stop pretending."

She doesn't move. You dig your fingers into the soft gray-green-blue of her arms. You tighten your grip on her wrists, tighten it enough to leave bruises. She doesn't move, she doesn't react, and you let go, mind racing for a way to make her stop this nonsense. You move closer to her, prop her up a little so she's not lying flat on her back anymore. It must have been uncomfortable, you think, laying on the ground for so long in that position.

"D'you wanna know a secret, Pyrope?" you say in your best conspiratorial voice, and lean in so that only she can hear. Your breath is warm on her ear. It tickles her hair. "I killed Jack for you."

She doesn't move, but you think- you hope- you swear- you tell yourself that you see some small twitching of surprise on her face, and you cackle at it. The sound rips itself out of your throat with surprising force. 

"Oh, I pretended that it was to be a hero," you tell her warmly. "To save everyone on this fucking rock. And I even believed it. But c'mon. I was just pretending! Just lying to myself. I'm really good at that. You know I'm good at that. I always lied to myself, and to everyone else, but- no pun intended, I swear- you saw through it, Pyrope. You always saw through it."

You smooth back a curl that has fallen into her face, hand trembling despite yourself. There is a cut on her forehead, and you touch your bleeding thumb to it gently, where a drop of cobalt smears against dried teal.

"I did it for _you_ , Terezi," you croon, cradling her cheek. "Wanted to be a hero for you. So you'd stop looking at me like I made you sad. Like I was a disappointment. I never wanted to make you look at me like that. Didn't you know that? I wanted to be someone you could be proud of, wanted you to look at me the way you did back when we were wrigglers. Like I was a hero, bright and shining and _good_ -"

You choke on the sob as it comes out and none of this is funny anymore. It's just frightening. She's scaring you, and you're angry, and sad, but most importantly you're scared.

You shake her shoulders, a little too roughly, and her head wobbles with the motion. "C'mon, Pyrope, this isn't funny anymore," you say, and the desperation in your voice is palpable, your fear-scent thick in the air. "Stop fucking around, okay? Stop pretending. Wake up. Wake up."

Nothing. You reach for your mind powers, pull for them and try to grab her mind, but there's nothing out there, the whole darkness around you is empty and there's nothing, no one, but she can't be gone, she can't be, and so you keep going, keep pulling until you can feel blue veins bursting in your eyes and bleeding downwards, and you are sobbing, sobbing, sobbing blue blood because she's gone.

You wanted to be her hero. You wanted her to look at you as if you were worth something. And now she's gone, because you screwed it all up, and you wish now that you'd lost the fucking battle, that Jack had killed you too, because at least then your body would have been next to hers on the ground, and you wouldn't have to live like this, alone, in a world alone.

But you won, and so here you sob on your knees and bury your face in her hair, holding her slowly cooling body in your arms, lost in the knowledge of your own worst mistake: thinking you could be good. Thinking you could do good. Girls like you don't ever get to do good. 

Your name is Vriska Serket, and you won. You're the winner. It's you.

**Author's Note:**

> i have a hc (inspired by [maidofsalt's hcs](http://maidofsalt.tumblr.com/post/175899053397/sorry-if-youve-been-asked-before-but-its-not-on)) that when trolls use psionics/mind control/telekinesis/whatever, their eyes become bloodshot. if they use them for an extended period of time, esp. when theyre not healthy, they just flat out start bleeding from the eyes


End file.
